Estilo desornamentado, plain-style architecture: some aspects of the renaissance in the Iberian Peninsula

Abstract

In the sixteenth century, in the Iberian Peninsula, the assimilation of the romano gives impulse to an architectural stream in which a progressive classicism and the decorative nudity announce the arrival of the so-called Renaissance. Despite their peculiarities, the Portuguese plain-style and the Spanish estilo desornamentado set their basis on architectural doctrines originated in Italy. Brought either by the artifices that have been in such lands - or by its architects invited to work in the Peninsula - or by the architectural treatises imported and, afterwards, translated into Spanish and Portuguese, such doctrines also stimulated the publication of other significant texts of theoretical systematization, such as Sagredo´s Medidas del romano. This article discusses such aspects of the Renaissance in the Iberian Peninsula.